She closed her eyes. She didn’t think about the Krevata, intent on killing her. She didn’t think about Trevarr, in so much pain and still holding her, still getting her through what it had taken to heal this world.
She didn’t think about the energies still swirling within her, the indelible stamp of Trevarr on her body and soul, the sight of a strange world and just how badly it had wanted to suck her in.
She didn’t think about a pink elephant while she was at it.
“Drew.” Beth kept her voice low, but made no real attempt to keep her words from Garrie — only from the others in the room. “Just look at her. Can’t you see — ?” She stopped, blew out an exasperated breath. “Maybe not. Maybe that’s one of those sensitive things or maybe it’s just a man thing. But look at her shirt —”
“Stained,” Drew said, sounding sullen. “Basement. Big surpr —”
“Blood,” Beth interrupted. “Can’t you tell? I know it doesn’t look right, but — Drew, that’s a lot of blood.”
“Trevarr’s,” Garrie said, from between her teeth, and then did very much think of him, in so much pain and still holding her, still getting her through what it had taken to heal this world.
Quiet hands touched hers.
Gentle hands.
Garrie’s eyes flew open to find Lucia looking at her. Didn’t it just figure. So deeply in hiding to protect herself, ravaged spirits of this place, and yet so alert to a friend’s need. “Lucia!”
Lucia nodded, eyes bright and reddened, nose and cheeks reddened. For an instant they stared at one another, and then fell together in a fierce girlfriend hug, patting each other’s backs and sniffling in each other’s ears.
When they pulled apart, Lucia was already digging into her waist packs for tissues. She handed one to Garrie and spoke with a worn voice. “Let’s get out of here.”
Garrie was all for it.
She gathered up her things and held her hand out to Lucia.
Beth headed over to the original guide, working out the logistics for the quickest possible retreat while Drew stood between Garrie and Lucia and the rest of the tour group, looking as unapproachable as Garrie had ever seen him.
“Trevarr?” Lucia whispered, tipping her head toward Garrie for what little privacy they could get.
Garrie reached out tidy the uncharacteristic disarray of Lucia’s hair, finger combing the worst of it back into place, nearly sleek again. She bit her lip and didn’t respond, daring only a flick of her gaze before retreating again. Then she shook herself off and straightened up. “It’s okay,” she said. “Really.”
“Liar.” But Lucia took her hand. “Let’s get out of here, chic. We can sort out the sorting out over some horchata.”
Beth returned to Drew’s side. “The other guide will stay here with —” She shifted uncomfortably, looking at the two victims. The others were already trickling out the double doors, lingering in the hallway for guidance but no longer willing to wait in the ballroom. Beth said, “I’ll lead the rest of us out. Garrie, if you don’t mind keeping watch..?”
She didn’t have to say it. For trouble, and spirits, and things that would go bump in the night.
Garrie said, “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
The room stirred, ever so slightly. The little ghost girl’s voice turned into a sigh of words on the ethereal breeze.
“Thaank youu.”
~~~~~~~~~~
Chapter 38
Of All the Worlds
Dissolution is a last resort.
— Rhonda Rose
Really, I just blew them all away.
— Lisa McGarrity
“You killed them?” Ghost Bob said, popping up right in front of Garrie as she ran the hotel treadmill.
Garrie pretended he hadn’t affected her in the least. New spirits were especially fond of that trick, and they all assumed they were the very first to think of it. The novelty would wear off.
She hoped.
Besides, she’d already felt him in the area. Taking her by surprise before her inner woo-woo had been supercharged by plasmic energy hadn’t ever been easy. Now...
She wasn’t sure it could be done.
“Hey,” Bob said. “Boo.”
She’d have thought she’d be exhausted. Too tired to worry about the uneasy settle of energies within her, and completely ready to sleep for a week. Which seemed to be about how long Trevarr had paid for their rooms. Instead, she’d slept for... well, a day.
A day in which San Jose still buzzed with excitement and dazed confusion but had largely recovered itself, left only with minor quake clean-up. A day in which the news media beat its frustrated communal head against hard objects due to the inability of any camera, anywhere, to capture images of recent events.
Chalk one up for the interference of otherworldly energies, and thank goodness for it at that. Though she’d give anything to ask Trevarr about it. For all she’d learned — there are other worlds. Other cultures. Halfbloods and rekherra — there was so much more she wanted to know. About those other worlds and their breezes... and about his life.
Actually, she’d give anything to ask him so many things, as much as she could guess that her shimmery hair and skin had come from the energies she’d channeled. But she wasn’t entirely sure what to do with the stunningly beautiful energy ovals tucked away behind her clothes in the hotel drawer. Among the other questions crowding her mind.
How many different worlds and dimensions have you seen, Trevarr?
And would you maybe take me to see them, too?
She wasn’t sure Drew felt the same. Or Lucia. They’d slept for two days, both of them — getting up only long enough to stumble into the bathroom, eat a few bites of food, and fall back into bed. Processing. Recovering. Not really yet understanding.
Lucia looked a little better each time she got up. Drew... got a little more quiet. And then he’d gotten up for good, called Beth, and disappeared. Lucia, too, had disappeared — sightseeing, shopping... Garrie wasn’t sure. She’d already padded Garrie’s minimal remaining wardrobe, and she’d even chosen clothes that Garrie would have picked herself instead of poking at her sense of personal style by bringing back designer I-don’t-think-sos.
Soon enough, they’d feel ready to face the world again, and then they’d go home.
“Seriously,” Bob said. “BOO. Wasn’t that at least worth a gasp? You’re giving me a complex.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking. How’s this? Eeek!” No one else in the room, always a plus when talking to a ghost.
“Ha ha. You’ve been at this for days.” He mimed running with his fingers. “Do you ever stop?”
“I don’t know,” she told him. “Things have never been just like this before.”
“Do you think he’s coming back?”
“I don’t know,” she told him, and let slip a little breeze, making for herself a little personal space.
Bob didn’t take offense. He was in the spiritual classification of Golden Retriever. In your face, enthusiastic, everything was cool and nothing bothered him much.
That last was kind of a shame. “You sure you don’t want to, you know, figure out what’s keeping you here and find some resolution?”
“Hey,” he said, putting on an offended expression. “That wasn’t subtle.” But Golden Retriever mode was set to full force, and only a moment later, he asked the question he’d been working up to for days. “You killed the House ghosts?”
“Technically,” she pointed out, breathing easily between words, “they were already dead.” She’d picked an easy long-distance pace for the day, put the exercise room TV to the HBO feed, and settled in for a movie. Bob, of course, had muted the sound upon his arrival. He was learning fast, all right.
He put a finger on the treadmill computer; the pace suddenly hit sprint. Garrie avoided nasty road rash with a wild twisting windmill of arm and torso, and then let the belt carry her back so she could jump off, straddling a foot on either side
of the base. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t ever. If you think I’ll even hesitate —”
“To what?” he challenged, stopping the treadmill altogether. “Blow me away, like you did them?”
“Blowing them off is all I did,” she told him, exasperated. “You’re the one who assumed otherwise. I didn’t take them apart, Bob. I cleared the house.” And clear it was, too. She’d done a number of surveys of the house since then, and found only a stray spirit or two as the house began to restock.
“Really?” He brightened. “From the feel of it from here... I thought...”
She reached for her sweat towel. “I won’t say I think they’re happy about how things turned out. But they made their choices, too.” She gave him a pointed look. “So do you.”
“Give it up. I’m having fun. My life prepared me perfectly for my death.”
She couldn’t argue that. She headed back for the room, where she threw her sports bottle on the bed she shared with Lucia and stood in the doorway of Trevarr’s empty room.
It still smelled like him.
She stood there a long time, the sweat of exertion drying on her body, eyes closed, just... inhaling. Not thinking too hard about it, because she’d learned fast not to do that. And then, when her throat had tightened down into a painful knot and her stomach felt hard and her spine had tightened to painful tension, she turned away. Right before it got to be too much.
She ended up in front of the mirror. Looking — again — at what that day had wrought.
Normal Garrie, in a public-ready sports bra covered by a hacked crop top. Body by austerity budget — too short, too scant, too wired. Nothing lush about it.
Except the way it had felt when —
She turned away from that, too.
But it wasn’t truly the same at all. Not her skin, which — in just the right light, in just the right places, had a new sheen to it. Silver overlay, the faintest shimmer in the sun... over her collarbones, over her shoulders, over her cheeks and nose...
The hair was a little easier to deal with. She’d played with colors and streaks for years, after all. Just because her fading blue streaks had gone silvery gray, just because it now seemed to grow that way... well, really. The least of her problems.
Because if the energies had made these small surface changes, what had they done down deep? And at what possible worst time would she discover those other changes?
She knew who she wanted to ask, all right. But she’d figure it out, one way or the other.
She headed for a quick shower and emerged to the sound of voices, a small bundle of dirty clothes in her hand and bumming-around sweats on her body, ready for dinner.
The voices turned out to be Lucia on her cell phone and Drew draped over a chair while Beth sat on his bed.
Lucia, her fading bruises expertly covered with make-up, her espresso-dark hair sleek and shiny again, tapped the phone and tossed it aside. “Chica-let,” she said. “That was Quinnie. He’s got a lead on some thing in Arizona. He thinks it got stirred up by recent... events.” She shrugged. “Who knows. But... old girlfriend, you know? Asking for help. He wants us to meet him there.”
“There, where?” Garrie said absently, shoving her bundle of dirty clothes in the drawer beside the hidden extra-dimensional beauty and power.
Lucia exchanged a glance with Drew. “Sedona.”
“What?” Garrie threw her hands in the air. “No!”
“It’s very pretty,” Lucia said, by way of admonishment.
“It’s insane. You know it’s insane. All that energy whipping around, all the woo-woo hounds —”
“We are woo-woo hounds,” Lucia pointed out.
Garrie opened her mouth to argue — and slowly closed it again. Sedona... her worst nightmare. Those with half a talent would peg her for the real thing right away, drawn to her — while most of them tried to prove themselves more woo-woo than thou. And the pretenders... they would scorn her, trying to trip her up... getting in her way. Disproving her would be the only way to validate themselves.
But Quinn had asked. And Lucia clearly wanted to go.
And she owed them all.
Drew cleared his throat. “Maybe not me.”
Lucia snorted genteelly, swinging her leg back and forth over the side of the bed, a sandal dangling from her toes. “As much as any of us,” she said. “More.”
“No, I mean...” He glanced at Beth, who offered silent encouragement, and then he looked at the floor. And by then Garrie knew.
He wasn’t coming with them.
“Drew...” she said.
“Look, you know I’m not doing so hot with the university thing. I don’t fit their mold. I know too much about stuff I shouldn’t, and I have to hide most of that. I don’t follow their neat rules and patterns and linear thinking.”
Garrie’s throat, still tight from her time in Trevarr’s room, barely let her say, “But you love archeology. I can’t believe you’d give that up.”
“What?” He gave her a startled look. “No! I mean... I’m just looking to go freelance, maybe. You know, do advance work for folks who want to up the odds of their success on a dig. Get out in the field — and what with Stanford and all, this place has opportunities. You should understand that... you were stifled, back in Albuquerque with nothing going on. Well, this has all made me realize... me, too.”
Imagine that. Not a badly used slang term in the mix.
Lucia had lost her composure, her swinging leg stilled. “But Drew... we’re a team...”
He sent Garrie a wry look. “Not so much as we should be.”
Garrie looked away. “I know. I screwed up,” she said. “I was trying to protect you, and instead I made decisions for you.”
“Yeah.” Drew crossed his arms. “You did. And hey, I even kinda grok why. It’s just not what I want right now.”
Lucia said, “But —”
“It’s okay, Lucia,” Garrie said, forcing the words; they came out a little rushed, a little harsh. “I get it. I mean, I don’t like it, but I get it. Consequences happen.” She swallowed, hard. “I hope you change your mind, Drew. I really do.”
Beth stood up, overly cheerful in every movement. “Well, you’ve got a couple more days in this room, right? Time for everyone to think?”
As if she didn’t want Drew to stay. Couldn’t have been more obvious.
Drew, too, rose from his chair, heading for the open doorway to the other room. “I’m thinking I should take this room,” he said. “It’s stupid to leave it empty when we’re splitting this one three ways.” He glanced back at Garrie. “I mean, it’s not like he’s coming back.”
Oh, why not just complete the misery? “You don’t know that,” she told him, voice catching on the words. When he just looked at her, she said, “You don’t. And hey...” She narrowed her eyes. “You shaved.”
Beth gave a pleased nod. “He certainly did.”
Oh, God. It was serious.
“You know what?” she told him. “Whatever. Seriously. Your choice. I’m just gonna call the airlines and change our tickets to Arizona.” If she turned around fast enough, he might not even see that she’d finally started leaking the tears she’d been fighting off for days now.
She had the feeling that if she truly got started, she’d just never stop.
She couldn’t, in the moment, even care at the flush of energy that most likely meant Ghost Bob had decided to follow her after all.
“Oh,” Drew said. His voice had gone strange. “Oh. Er. Never mind. I like sharing. Sharing is good.” He backed out of the room. Slowly. So very casual.
Lucia sent Garrie a frown. Garrie sent Lucia a frown.
“Sspttt-ssptt-ssptt!” ::Share your room. This is mine.::
And Garrie knew. She knew.
She propelled herself into the adjoining room, not slowing until she ran right into the wall of Trevarr — a collision, it would have been, had he not been perfectly ready for it. Though if he thought receiving her with a li
ft would slow her down, he was so very wrong.
She only wrapped her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck and kissed the hell out of him.
He did quite a fine job of kissing her back.
So much so that it took several moments before Garrie registered the reaction behind her, where the others still stood behind the invisible boundary at the doorway.
“Hey,” Lucia said, wickedly dry. “Seriously. No need to be shy around us. We certainly never suspected.”
Garrie stopped with the kissing — still clinging to him, her mouth still connected to his. “Oops,” she said, through that connection.
He pulled back slightly, that faint smile at the corners of his mouth. “No oops.”
She relaxed her legs, slid right down the front of him — careful of the belt buckle. “Good, because I’d like to do that as often as possible. Are you back? Are you all right?”
In sudden frantic realization, she patted down his torso, looking for bandages, wondering if she’d hurt him. He caught her hands. “A few more days,” he said. “But all right.”
“And... and your people?”
He looked away. It didn’t hide the spark of fury and grief.
“No!” Garrie cried, too stunned to look for better words. “That’s not right! You sent back the Krevata!”
“Damaged,” he said, a dark note in his voice. “Dead. My instructions were to return them whole, to face punishment.”
“But you did it for me! For this world!” She grabbed his shirt, gave him a little shake — taking liberties she never would have considered before that basement room in the Winchester House. “You could have left at any time once we got back to that room, don’t tell me you couldn’t! You didn’t need to stay, or to get shot, or to bring me back or to heal this world —”
“Atreya.” One word, and it was enough to stop her. And his expression, nearly enough knock her down. “Yes,” he said, “I did.”
And when she went to throw her arms around him again, he opened his own and took her in.
It was answer enough for both of them.
Don’t die in order to live.
— Rhonda Rose
The Reckoners Page 36
